Carmen DeLeon of Local 768 raises inspector shortage, salary, and safety concerns
Carmen DeLeon, president of Local 768, says public health sanitarians and the Bureau of Food Safety face a staffing shortage and low salaries. She says the union will conduct salary metrics and raises concerns about physical and verbal assaults during inspections, calling Intro 189's documentation process impractical and redundant.
Thank you, Chair Shulman.
We know.
Go ahead.
So I am Carmen DeLeon.
I am, as always, the president for right now of Local 768.
I represent many of the health care members throughout the city.
The public health sanitarians and the Bureau of Food Safety is covered by our local.
So three points that I want to make.
One of them is that there is a shortage of public health sanitarians.
With that being the Academy, the Bureau of Food Safety, we've had many issues throughout the years of my tenure of six years, and we haven't really gotten to look at that.
The second thing, of course, is the salary.
We haven't done metrics, so we are, after this, we're going to do metrics on salaries based on cities with the same type of cost of living.
And then the other thing is more pointedly to Intro 018.
We have some serious concerns around safety and health for our members who have been physically and verbally assaulted during inspections.
So there is that.
And then there's...
one of my members when I was talking about this to get kind of some feedback was that the process that's being asked for in particular in 0189 is actually impractical.
It is a redundancy of processes that are already in place.
Is that the video one?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry?
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I was just figuring out which letter.
0189, and I'm now going to turn it over to my executive vice president, Charlton Smith.